Equal Partners?

By Said T. El-Said*

"It is time to end the farce. To discard the poisoned crumbs
that were given to the Palestinians during the 1993 Oslo
accords.  It is time for the P.A. to stop being treated as
a ‘state’ without authority, without land, without rights,
without respect.  It is time for it to resign and leave...
The P.A. has not only failed but is now serving as
a cover for Israel and its illegal, inhuman policies for
Eretz Israel expansion...  The Palestinian people have
the right to resist occupation by international law without
the constraints of a P.A. which  restrains them in the
futile hope of obtaining an ever illusive peace on an
ever shrinking piece of land with ever shrinking rights."

 

 

It is amazing how amnesic the human mind is. Is it comfort or are we being fooled outright?

 

Never have we witnessed a more dramatic change in the interpretation of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. Lands that have been taken over not once, but twice, leaving an ever shrinking occupied 22% of original Palestine. And this, against numerous UN resolutions declaring such action contrary to international law and calling for Israeli withdrawal.

 

Palestinians, not Israeli’s, are the refugees squashed into camps, undernourished, impoverished, their homes demolished. Palestinian refugees are not allowed to return to their land while any Jew of any origin has an automatic right to immigrate to Israel.

 

Illegal Jewish settlements are expanded and new ones launched as Palestinians are crushed further into the ground by one of the world’s best-equipped and trained armies.  There are no illegal settlements of Palestinians on Israeli lands.

 

Palestinian leadership (good or bad) is arrested, marginalized, killed or put under house arrest while a deliberate campaign of destroying Palestinian infra structure, homes, farms is waged in the name of ‘security’. The perpetrator is called a ‘man of peace’ by the leader of the most powerful country in the world.

 

The more the Palestinians are oppressed, disenfranchised, robbed of their lives and dignity, the more it is their fault. With a sweep of a magic wand the victim now deserves the treatment being inflicted. They have been turned into heathens who should walk upright the way their white masters want them to or become extinct in a new form of the Israeli adaptation of Darwin’s theory, evolve my way or die.

Stateless Palestinians have risen up against Israeli occupation and oppression, without arms, tanks, planes, gun ships or missiles. Some have executed desperate acts of terror. However, it is the Palestinians that face daily terror, for the last 55 years, by a machine that controls every aspect of their lives.

Creative international media in general and in the US in particular have redefined the English language when it applies to Israeli actions. Occupied territories are now ‘disputed’ territories on which Palestinians happen to have arrived by parachute. Illegal settlements are now called ‘neighborhoods’. These ‘neighborhoods’ are being built on demolished Palestinian lives, homes, confiscated lands or farms. Occupiers are now ‘settlers’ in the tradition of the European immigration to the US and Australia. Gaza is the home of 5,000 immigrant Jews that have taken over one third of the total land there, leaving one million Palestinians, ‘fenced in’ refugees, in one the most densely populated areas in the world. Gaza has been turned into one of the biggest prisons in the world. The resistance to occupation is now ‘terrorism’. The 8 meter high concrete Wall, with even higher watch towers manned with machine guns aimed at the recently bulldozed wasteland called ‘safety zones’ on either side, built by Israel on Palestinian lands, is called a ‘fence’, like the ones we have separating our gardens in happy suburbia. The Wall is swiping large segments of the leftovers of Palestinian land and cutting off more farmers from their farm lands and villages. About 40% of the West Bank (40% of the 22% left of original Palestine) is being cut off. An additional 600,000 Palestinian lives are disrupted. 275,000 are now inside the ‘fence’ and are facing deliberate eviction, better known as ethnic cleansing. The world watches shamelessly with occasional mutterings about the need for peace.

 

World media adds insult to injury in its coverage. Today, in spite of well known facts on the ground, Palestinians and Israelis are suddenly on equal footing. Somehow these ‘equal’ protagonists are unable to settle their ‘equal’ problems as they wage ‘equal’ war on each other. Equal in what? Who is crushing who? Who has created 3.5 million refugees? Who is shooting at them daily? Who uprooted close to some 400,000 olive trees and demolished close to 8,000 homes since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993? Who is diverting 88% of the West Bank water resources to illegal settlements? Who is under constant curfew? Who closes schools, shoots at crowds, ambulances, hospitals in the name of a recent invention called, ‘security’? Who has crushed the occupied population to such an inhumane level to attain a never before seen degree of desperation that now feeds the suicide bombers, another unacceptable fact on the ground.

 

When it comes to peace, Israel sets pre-conditions on any possible talks while maintaining its strangle hold on the Palestinians. Palestinians must prove they have earned the right to come to the peace table by shooting or imprisoning their own, while Israel can continue with its brutal force. When the Palestinians agree to a ‘truce,’ as was the case last summer for over 40 days, Israel continued its home demolitions, Wall construction, bypass - Jews only - roads, not to mention extra-judicial killings by firing from F-16s or Apache Helicopters into crowded areas killing mostly innocent people. The blame, twisted in a Kafkaesque tragedy, falls on the victim.

 

The Palestinian Authority is blamed for everything which happens. Their elected president remains under house arrest, more often than not, without electricity, water, telephone lines. The PA. Infra-structure has been bombed, its police force disbanded or killed. Yet it is their entire fault. Everything that went wrong with the farce that some well intentioned people call ‘peace talks’ is because of Palestinians. They have ‘lost’ so many opportunities to have peace as their land shrinks daily.

 

Here we have an immensely powerful and brutal occupying force systematically destroying the people it occupied for 36 years, breaking every international law and convention, remaining above the law with the help of the world’s only super power. Yet, somehow the occupier and the occupied are on equal footing.

 

Nothing is equal about the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. Equality implies both stand on equal footing – well matched in terms of strength and power. Equality is when neither party considers itself, by some God given exclusivity, to be superior to others, or above the law.

 

It is time to end the farce. To discard the poisoned crumbs that were given to the Palestinians during the 1993 Oslo accords. It is time for the P.A. to stop being treated as a ‘state’ without authority, without land, without rights, without respect. It is time for it to resign and leave the occupied territories to Israel. The Israelis will be seen for what they are; a brutal killing machine which occupies the remaining Palestinian lands while blaming them and their leadership. Without the P.A. Palestinian living conditions could hardly be worse. However, as an occupied people, they will have the right not only to resist and fight for their freedom, but also for international protection from their occupier. Let the world take over the issues of Palestinians and protect them. Let the world face its responsibility and assist in resolving this 55 year injustice and on-going ethnic cleansing. The P.A. has not only failed but is now serving as a cover for Israel and its illegal, inhuman policies for Eretz Israel expansion.

 

The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation by international law without the constraints of a P.A. which  restrains them in the futile hope of obtaining an ever illusive peace on an ever shrinking piece of land with ever shrinking rights. 

 

* The author is a Palestinian born businessman living in Europe.